Telefónica Secures US$1.2 Billion in Loans from China

Telefónica secured US$1.2 billion in credit with China Development Bank and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. BBVA acted as Facility Agent for the ten year loan.

Telefónica said the purpose of the credit is for the purchasing of products and solutions by Telefónica group worldwide.

http://www.telefonica.com

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AT&T's Website Offline for Hours Ahead of iPhone 5

AT&T took its entire U.S. website offline hours ahead of the midnight (PT) commencement of iPhone 5 sales.  Customers log-in to existing accounts remained open.

The online Apple store also went offline ahead of the launch.

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ADVA Optical Networking Joins ONF

ADVA Optical Networking has joined the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) to help drive the development and standardization of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and OpenFlow protocols.

"SDN presents the networking industry with a real opportunity to drive radical new efficiencies," said Christoph Glingener, CTO at ADVA Optical Networking. "SDN and OpenFlow are already proving themselves inside the data center. By extending SDN beyond physical data center boundaries into the optical networking domain you can effectively automate your entire cloud networking infrastructure including the transport equipment interconnecting different sites. This type of holistic network virtualization is exciting; it’s something we've already demonstrated with our OpenFlow technology. Our partnership with the ONF will only accelerate our work here."

http://www.advaoptical.com

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Altera Announces 100G OTN Chip

Altera announced a single-chip, multi-rate OTN (optical transport network) muxponder solution for 100G network aggregation.

The new device is based on Altera’s 28-nm high-performance Stratix V FPGA, which enables developers to integrate emerging client types into their networks, such as 16G Fibre Channel.

The proliferation of 10G ports and the acceleration of networks from 40G towards 100G is driving operators to look for ways to minimize operational complexity by aggregating both legacy clients as well as 10G and 40G feeder networks into 100G for high-capacity transport.

Altera said its multi-rate muxponder solution addresses both data center and transport aggregation by flexibly supporting emerging clients, such as 16G Fibre Channel and 40G Ethernet along with various 10G clients.

"Altera's comprehensive portfolio of FPGA-based OTN solutions have been selected by eight of the top ten optical OEMs," said Dan Mansur, director of Altera’s communications division. “With our latest multi-rate muxponder IP solution, customers can customize their systems and target FPGA architectures that are optimized for their specific design requirements."

http://www.altera.com

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Alcatel-Lucent Wins Network Management Contract with Telefónica

Telefónica has awarded a landmark contract to Alcatel-Lucent to overhaul the operator’s network management systems – enabling it to streamline its operations, improve the quality of services for its customers and optimize costs, while leveraging the capacities developed by Telefónica. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Under the agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will combine the network management systems at the core of Telefonica’s operational support systems into a single, global software platform. Currently, Telefónica uses different operational processes in the many countries in which it operates. Alcatel-Lucent will help standardize both software and procedures for network management across Telefonica’s fixed and mobile networks.

Federico Guillén, President Alcatel-Lucent Spain and Global Account Manager for Telefónica said: “We are proud of the trust that Telefónica has placed in us to help transform their operations and improve their services to customers. We bring a great deal of experience to this challenge and are excited to have the opportunity to work with Telefónica to identify and implement the best possible processes and to industrialize this know-how across the globe."

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

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AT&T Mobility Reaches Labor Deal Covering 40,000 Workers

AT&T Mobility announced a tentative agreement with the Communications Workers of America in benefits negotiations covering more than 40,000 employees nationwide.

Some key points of the four-year tentative agreement:

• For employees hired on or before Dec. 31, 2012, monthly premiums for individual coverage would be $38 for 2013, $61 for 2014, $69 for 2015 and $82 for 2016. For these same employees, monthly premiums for family coverage would be $81 for 2013, $127 for 2014, $142 for 2015 and$169 for 2016.  New hires would pay a higher premium.  Deductibles for network care would be$500 for individual coverage and $1,000 for family coverage in each year of the contract
  .
• Establishment of a new Health Reimbursement Account (HRA) for qualified employees hired on or before Dec. 31, 2012. The company would provide $500 contributions into each of these employee's HRAs in 2013 and 2014.
  
• In the third year of the agreement, a Success Sharing Plan tied to AT&T stock would allow employees an opportunity to share in the company's success.

http://www.att.com

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Intel Developer Forum --"Connecting to the Future"

Intel is developing an all-digital radio that follows Moore’s Law by scaling in area and energy efficiency with such digital chip processes as Intel’s latest 22nm tri-gate technology. The all digital Wi-Fi radio system-on-chip designs targets smartphones, tablets and new wearable devices.

Some other areas highlighted in the Intel Developer Forum 2012 keynote by Justin Rattner, Director, Intel Labs and Intel Chief Technology Officer:

WiGig -- 60 GHz wireless technology capable of 5 Gbps performance

Intel Smart Connect technology -- wakes up an Ultrabook just long enough to receive the incoming packet traffic and then it goes back into standby mode to ensure long battery life.

Client Based Authentication Technology - using biometrics via a smartphone to provide network access.

C-RAN -- Intel Labs is collaborating with China Mobile to design and prototype a full-scale Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN).Dr. Chih-Lin I, chief scientist at the China Mobile Research Institute in Beijing, explained that C-RAN technology could reduce both capital and operational expenses for wireless service providers while providing superior levels of wireless services to users with fewer dropped connections during periods of peak demand.

VWN -- Intel Labs is engaged in another project Video Aware Wireless Network (VAWN), where both service providers and end users will benefit from the latest wireless research. VAWN aims to increase the streaming video capacity of wireless networks while improving the viewing experience by optimizing network performance on an end-to-end basis. Cisco and Verizon are partners with Intel of the VAWN project.

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LANautilus Undersea Upgrades to 40G with Ciena

The Latin American Nautilus (LANautilus) undersea cable system, which links stations in South, Central and North America with Telecom Italia’s Sparkle Global Backbone, has been upgraded with Ciena’s coherent 40G optical networking solutions. The upgrade effectively quadruples the capacity along this key undersea cable.
LANautilus is part of the Telecom Italia Sparkle Group and operates as a wholesale telecommunications service provider that delivers managed bandwidth, Internet/IP transit and co-location services to carrier and enterprise customers across its 30,000 km fiber optic ring.

LANautilus is using Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform equipped with WaveLogic coherent optical line interfaces. Ciena’s OneControl Unified Management System will deliver seamless end-to-end management across the 6500 and Common Photonic Layer (CPL) platforms providing LANautilus with all the tools needed for efficient multi-layer service activation, assurance, SLA monitoring, and accurate management of the dynamic nature of an intelligent network.

http://www.ciena.com

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Microsoft Tracks Nitol Botnet Pre-installed in Factory

A Microsoft investigation found that cybercriminals have infiltrated unsecure supply chains to introduce counterfeit Windows software embedded with malware at factories in China.  Microsoft's Operation b70, which stemmed from the study, tracked retailers who were selling computers loaded with counterfeit versions of Windows software embedded with the the Nitol botnet. 

Microsoft has just won a restraining order in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, granting it permission to take over the hosting of the 3322.org domain, which hosted the Nitol botnet.  Microsoft’s newly created domain name system (DNS) enables it to block operation of the Nitol botnet and nearly 70,000 other malicious subdomains hosted on the 3322.org domain, while allowing all other traffic for the legitimate subdomains to operate without disruption.

The case is documented in a blog posting on the Microsoft site.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/09/13/microsoft-disrupts-the-emerging-nitol-botnet-being-spread-through-an-unsecure-supply-chain.aspx

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Telecom Facilities Destroyed in N. Nigeria

A number of mobile masts and base stations in northern Nigeria were destroyed last week in attacks attributed to Boko Haram, a jihadist militant organization. According to allAfrica.com, companies suffering damage in the attacks included MTN, Glo, Airtel, Etisalat, Multilinks, and telecoms infrastructure provider, Helios Towers.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201209130182.html

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Azteca Comunicaciones Colombia Picks Ericsson for IP

Azteca Comunicaciones Colombia has selected Ericsson's IP network equipement to deliver broadband services to more than 397 municipalities under Colombia's national broadband initiative. The broadband services will be delivered using Wi-Fi and point-to-multipoint wireless access.

The network will include Ericsson's flagship SSR 8000 family of Smart Services Routers, deployed as core routers; SmartEdge Multi-Service Edge Routers; the SPO 1400 family of Packet Optical Transport Platforms (POTPs); and Ericsson Wi-Fi access points, controllers and management.

"This contract is a major endorsement of our 4th generation IP network solution and marks the beginning of a new partnership between Ericsson and Azteca Comunicaciones Colombia. The solution will enable Azteca Comunicaciones Colombia to offer a rich suite of differentiated services and the scalability of the platforms will ensure the ability to meet future traffic and subscriber growth targets," stated Jan Häglund, Head of IP and Broadband, Ericsson.

http://aztecacomunicaciones.com
http://www.ericsson.com

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Brocade's Latest VDX Data Center Ethernet Fabric Scales to 384,000 VMs

Brocade has expanded its set of VDX fabric switches for the data center with a new model designed for enterprises and service providers striving to both simplify and scale-out their data center infrastructure.

The modular Brocade VDX 8770 Switch is built to support the largest data centers with highly virtualized environments. The Ethernet fabric enables faster virtual machine (VM) migrations through zero-touch VM discovery, VM mobility and VM port configuration migration. Using VCS fabrics, Brocade said its customers can manage dozens of switches as a single logical device. New switches will self-provision when they are connected to the fabric.

The Brocade VDX 8770 enables a single VCS fabric to scale up to 8000 switch ports with up to 384,000 VMs attached to the fabric. This is 20 times the scalability of the leading competitor, according to Brocade. The Brocade VDX 8770 also delivers the industry's lowest port-to-port latency at 3.5 microseconds across all 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), 10 GbE and 40 GbE ports -- half the latency of the nearest competitor.

The Brocade VDX 8770 is built with a 4 Tbps backplane, enabling the chassis to support future technologies such as dense 100 GbE. Brocade said the VDX 8770 is also engineered for emerging Software-Defined Networking (SDN) architectures, with flexible hardware support for network virtualization through technologies such as VXLAN overlay networking.

The Brocade VDX 8770 is priced at $65,000 ($833/10G port).

http://www.brocade.com

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Brocade Positions MLXe for SuperCore Routing with SDN

Brocade introduced a 24-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) module that enables its MLXe Series routers to scale up to 768 ports of 10 GbE in a single chassis.

Brocade is positioning the MLXe router for large-scale service provider "Supercore" networks and Internet data center cores requiring high port density, scalable MPLS, rich routing and deep buffering capabilities. The platform can be used to create highly scalable BGP-free MPLS "Supercore" networks optimized for high-speed transport and fast convergence. Brocade said that by reducing the number of devices and eliminating IP routing from the core of the network, providers can greatly simplify their architectures and reduce both capital expenditure and operational costs.

The Brocade solution is powered by its fourth generation MaxScale-160 Packet Processors, which pack 1.38 billion transistors using 45nm technology. The router's 10 GbE density can be coupled with Brocade 100 GbE technology to drive next gen core networks.

Brocade is also working to integrate SDN and OpenFlow in the MLXe to control individual traffic flows up to 100 Gbps.  The company said this will maximize network resource utilization and improve traffic control to deliver differentiated SLAs.

For large data centers operators, the 768-port density achieved with the new 24-port 10 GbE module enables consolidation at the core of the network. The Brocade MLXe router delivers advanced Layer 3 switching capabilities and full-feature support for access control, routing and forwarding with 64-port Link Aggregation (LAG) capacity.  The platform complements Brocade VCS Fabric technology running on the family of Brocade VDX switches in the access and aggregation layers.

Significantly, Brocade is offering support for OpenFlow in Hybrid Mode, enabling the 10 GbE and 100 GbE Brocade MLXe solutions to integrate SDN with existing IP/MPLS networks .Brocade ADX platforms are also optimized for SDN, providing an application services fabric with a unified control plane and an API for resource assignment, enabling customized orchestration and provisioning of both physical and logical resources.

"Network operators are challenged to scale their networks and manage increasing complexity -- with more routers, more subnets and massive dynamic flows," said Ken Cheng, vice president of Service Provider and Application Delivery Products at Brocade. "The Brocade MLXe Core Router with the new 24-port 10 GbE module and industry-leading SDN technology will enable them to significantly scale their core networks to do more while greatly reducing network complexity and cost."

Brocade also released new OS software for its ADX Application Delivery Switches, delivering a new multitenancy capability. This carrier-grade multitenant architecture isolates customers or applications with dedicated hardware allocation of application delivery resources. A Brocade Network Subscription capacity-on-demand subscription model that aligns infrastructure cost to business needs, gives providers a highly elastic infrastructure acquisition and deployment model that matches the way they deliver cloud services.

http://www.brocade.com

• In May 2011, Brocade first introduced its MLXe, featuring a 15.36 Terabits per second (Tbps) fabric for core networks.  The Brocade MLXe router is offered in 4-, 8-, 16- and 32-slot configurations.  Brocade also introduced a Multi-Chassis Trunk (MCT) innovation to simplify data center networks and increase resiliency for customers moving to 10 GbE-enabled servers. In addition, a new Brocade Network Advisor management solution provides visibility for Brocade Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), wireless, Ethernet switching, and MPLS networks.

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Three versions of Apple's iPhone 5 for Supporting Global LTE

Apple is producing three versions of the iPhone 5 to meet spectrum requirements of carriers worldwide. The first round of carriers supporting LTE was also confirmed.

GSM model A1428: UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE Band (AWS) and LTE Band 17 (700b MHz). Carriers supporting include AT&T (U.S.), and is Canada, Bell (including Virgin), Rogers (including Fido), Telus (including Koodo).

CDMA model A1429: CDMA EV-DO Rev. A and Rev. B (800, 1900, 2100 MHz); UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE Band 1 (2100 MHz), LTE Band 3 (1800 MHz), LTE Band 5 (850 MHz), LTE Band 13 (700c MHz)and LTE Band 25 (1900 MHz). Carriers supporting include Sprint (U.S.),Verizon (U.S.), and KDDI (Japan).

GSM model A1429: UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE Band 1 (2100 MHz), LTE Band 3 (1800 MHz), LTE Band 5 (850 MHz). Carriers supporting include Deutsche Telekom (Germany), Everything Everywhere (UK), Orange (UK), T-Mobile (UK), Optus & Virgin (Australia), Telstra (Australia), Softbank (Japan), SK Telecom (Korea), KT (Korea), SmarTone (Hong Kong), M1 (Singapore), and SingTel (Singapore).

Other radios on-board include 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi (802.11n 2.4GHz and 5GHz) and Bluetooth 4.0.

Apple has not included NFC in the iPhone 5.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/

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NEC Develops Optical Switching Handling 20 Tbps Signals

NEC has published a technical paper on its development of an optical switching device capable of changing between a variety of transmission paths (routes) using silicon photonic technologies (optical circuits using silicon-based semiconductors) with ultra high capacity 20Tbps optical signals. NEC said its prototype device has demonstrated high quality optical switching, without signal deterioration, of optical super channels (20Tbps) and 100 Gbps DP-QPSK.

NEC describes its device as a transponder aggregator (TPA) that supports multiple signal formats and features a color-less, direction-less, contention-less (CDC) Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer (ROADM) capabilities.

"NEC's new developments utilize TPA and produce compact modules featuring silicon integrated optical switches that boast 150 elements on a single chip. This enables the switching of large 48-unit transponders between 8 routes while capitalizing on CDC functions," said Naoki Nishi, General Manager, Green Platform Research Laboratories, NEC Corporation. "We now anticipate the incorporation of this TPA on a single board as well as the reduction of module size and power consumption by roughly 90% when compared to optical switches based on conventional silica optical waveguides. Furthermore, the optimized drive of each switch will enable us to provide high speed, stable signal switching."

NEC is presenting its research at this week's Photonics in Switching 2012 (PS 2012) conference in Corsica, France, and at ECOC 2012 in Amsterdam, Holland.

http://www.nec.co.jp

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GigOptix Shows 100G/200G DP-16QAM System

GigOptix is showing a 100G/200G DP-16QAM System at this week's European Conference and Exhibition on Optical Communications (ECOC) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The GigOptix GX62472 is a Surface Mounted Technology (SMT) Mach Zehnder Modulator (MZM) quad linear driver designed with integrated GPPO outputs for 100G, 200G and 400G DWDM metro and long-haul optical transmitters. The company said its devices is capable of data rates up to 32Gbaud for use in 200G/400G Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) systems.

http://www.gigoptix.com

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Broadcom Debuts Gigabit PHY with AutoGrEEEn Efficiency

Broadcom introduced Gigabit single physical layer transceiver (PHY) family featuring new AutoGrEEEn Plus technology, which reduces operating power as much as 95 percent when there is no active data connection and the device is communicating with an Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) link partner.  With integrated SyncE+, the BCM54210E 10/100/1000BASE-T PHY family delivers timing synchronization capabilities at the physical layer.

http://www.broadcom.com

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Alcatel-Lucent Wins Biggest Share of China Telecom's OTN Project

Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell has been selected as the top provider of converged optical transport network (OTN) and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology, winning 70 percent market share in the 10G sector in China Telecom’s most recent central bidding process, its largest such tender to date. Under the contract, Alcatel-Lucent will increase the capacity of China Telecom’s optical transport network, expanding it to reach all of China’s major cities.

Alcatel-Lucent will supply China Telecom with its 100G-ready converged OTN/WDM technology employed in the 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) and the Photonic Service Engine (PSE) chip. With the 1830 PSS, China Telecom will be able to support a mixture of 10G, 40G and 100G channels on the same fiber pair. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The network supports the national "Broadband China" program, which aims to deliver high-speed broadband connections to more than 250 million urban and rural homes by 2015.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

• In June 2012, Alcatel-Lucent confirmed that China Telecom will deploy its IP/MPLS solution to enable high-bandwidth video and data broadband services under the "Broadband China" project. The project will leverage the Alcatel-Lucent IP/MPLS 7750 Service Router (SR) portfolio, including the 7750 SR-12 and 7750 SR-7, as the Broadband Network Gateway to deliver high-performance service and subscriber management capabilities. In conjunction with the 7750 SR, the Alcatel-Lucent 7705 Service Aggregation Routers (SAR) (including the 7705 SAR-M, 7705 SAR-8, and 7705 SAR-18) will deliver an optimized IP/MPLS mobile backhaul, leveraging common SR-OS software, to address China Telecom’s 2G, 3G, and future LTE mobile broadband needs.

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GSA: 96 Operators Have Launched LTE

A total of 96 operators have launched commercial LTE services in 46 countries, according to an updated count from the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA). The figure reaffirms LTE as the fastest developing mobile system technology ever.

Some additional stats:

• 292 operators have made firm commitments to deploy commercial LTE networks in 93 countries.
• 11 commercial LTE TDD systems have launched in Australia, Brazil, India, Japan, Oman, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and the UK.
• 68 operators have launched commercial LTE services in the past 12 months.
• GSA forecasts there will be 152 commercial LTE networks operating in 65 countries by December 31, 2012.
• LTE in 1800 MHz spectrum is now launched on one third of all commercial LTE networks.

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Broadcom Debuts Octal 10GbE/Dual 40GbE PHY for Data Centers

Broadcom introduced a low power octal 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), dual 40GbE physical layer transceiver (PHY) for data center switches. It includes PHY features such as line and system high-speed equalization to drive SFP+, QSFP+, or KR interfaces, PRBS pattern generators and checkers, loopback functionality, and on-chip AC coupling capacitors to satisfy requirements for higher density switch and server configurations.

Broadcom said the device lowers system costs by integrating optical module control functionality that typically reside in field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The device operates at 300mW per full duplex10GbE port -- the lowest in the industry.

http://www.broadcom.com

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